Main menu

Category Archives: Profit Improvement

Pretty much every company wants to increase its profit, and most managers devote a large portion of their time to trying to increase revenues and margins, or reduce costs. As a financial manager and consultant, I have been involved in many profit improvement initiatives. Here are some examples – they are mostly from construction, retail and land development, but the concepts can be applied to any business.

Delay of Expenditures

Time is money. Delaying expenditures until absolutely necessary reduces interest, storage and other carrying costs, reduces pressure on borrowing limits and has a positive impact on return on investment. Speeding the receipt of funds has the same impact.

Financial Review

A land developer traditionally let marketing decide when certain tracts would be made available for sale to builders. The sites they selected appeared to be random throughout the communities, and they professed no particular strategy. I proposed marketing contiguous tracts to delay the outlay on roads and other infrastructure costs. As a result, we delayed the spending of tens of millions of dollars, and there wasn’t a grumble from marketing.

Looking Around

A retailer’s distribution center was designed to service a fixed number of stores, and the time was upon us to start construction on a new, larger center. The limiting factor was the number of boxes that would fit on the conveyors that passed in front of the merchandise pickers. I observed that if we simply changed the shape of the boxes, we could serve up to 50% more stores without incurring the multi-million dollar capital expenditure.

Process Review

Homebuilders often sell their model homes to investors, and lease them back until the community is sold out. The process is rather complex, involving the buyer, various attorneys, appraisers, the construction and marketing departments, accounting and treasury, among others. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on interest and carrying costs until the transaction is completed. I led a Six Sigma team to look into speeding the inflow of cash. We flow-charted the process, identified bottlenecks and delays, and established a standard timetable to be followed on all future transactions. We reduced the cycle time by three weeks, and calculated annual savings at $400,000.

Pretty much every company wants to increase its profit, and most managers devote a large portion of their time to trying to increase revenues and margins, or reduce costs. As a financial manager and consultant, I have been involved in many profit improvement initiatives. Here are some examples – they are mostly from construction, retail and land development, but the concepts can be applied to any business.

Allocation of Resources

Where a company chooses to invest its resources has an important effect on its profitability and ROI. This can be managed at the time of the initial investment, but ongoing investment needs to be reviewed with a critical eye.

Profit maximization – A land developer and builder was very disciplined in its due diligence on land acquisitions. Land development is a surprisingly complex process involving massive investment, and is subject to a seemingly endless list of restrictions and costly requirements from all levels of government. So choosing between land investment opportunities is a painstaking process, but often subject to emotional responses. We built a linear programming model to maximize the profitability of our land use plans based on our budgets and timing, as well as the attendant marketing and government constraints. This removed much of the emotion from the land acquisition process.

Unprofitable operations – A homebuilder was focused on entry-level housing, and suffered from tight margins and the need for economies of scale and tight discipline in that sector of the business. At the same time, its land entitlement and development business was generating high margins and even higher returns on investment. With 80% of the company’s overhead, but only a small percentage of profits coming from homebuilding, we weighed the investment required to operate a full-scale builder in a higher price category against the potential return, and decided to walk away from the business entirely. Overhead was drastically reduced, and capital was redirected to the more profitable business of land development.

More profit with lower investment – A retailer was famous for the department stores it had operated for many years. Over time, though, these stores had lost ground to competitors, and capital investment had been cut back in proportion to declining profits. The company also operated a number of successful specialty store formats. A time of reckoning came, and the company realized it could make management changes and invest heavily in its department stores, possibly reaching the level of success, for example, of Target Stores. After an intense review, though, they recognized that specialty stores had a higher potential return, a relatively lower investment, lower risk and correspondingly low barriers to entry in niche specialty markets. Relying on its depth of experience, the company closed its famous department stores, and reallocated its funds and energies toward rapid growth in specialty retailing. It became one of the top-performing companies on the New York Stock Exchange.

Drawing on strengths – Another homebuilder operated in a single market, selling low margin homes during a downturn in the housing market. Recognizing its strength in efficient, low cost construction, it started looking for new opportunities. We focused on selling houses at full margin for rental by investment partnerships, expanding regionally into new markets through joint ventures, construction for hire of military housing and multifamily construction.

Does your CFO lead your management team in constant evaluation of your resource allocation process?

Pretty much every company wants to increase its profit, and most managers devote a large portion of their time to trying to increase revenues and margins, or reduce costs. As a financial manager and consultant, I have been involved in many profit improvement initiatives. Here are some examples – they are mostly from construction, retail and land development, but the concepts can be applied to any business.

Communication

Sometimes a simple conversation will solve your problems. This can be a natural process, or the result of an expensive and time-consuming structured organizational review. If you have a problem, talk about it.

A telephone call – The sales department of a homebuilder often selected lots for sale in such a manner that the engineering department had to return to the city with new plans for approval. This caused time delays for sales and frustration in the engineering department, and resulted in increased plan approval fees. A Six Sigma team approached the problem, creating wishbone charts, pareto charts and other analyses to identify the underlying problem, but could find no statistical pattern. Finally, the head of engineering telephoned the head of sales, and the problem was eliminated in five minutes.

A meeting – The buyers at a retail company weren’t getting all the information they needed from the accounting department, so they appointed a full-time administrator to track and report on outstanding orders and merchandise receipts. A meeting between the buyers and the accountants resulted in an automated report that solved all the buyers’ needs, and the administrative position was eliminated.

Bottlenecks – A land developer was experiencing chronic delays in processing grading permits. Business was booming, so every day represented delayed revenue and additional carrying costs on multi-million dollar developments. A Six Sigma team spent several weeks of process flow-charting and statistical analysis, only to learn that the manager in charge of grading applications was swamped, and had a long backlog. They added a part-time clerk, and the problem was solved. Asking a few simple questions much earlier would have been a lot easier.

Does your CFO encourage your operating team to communicate with each other?

Pretty much every company wants to increase its profit, and most managers devote a large portion of their time to trying to increase revenues and margins, or reduce costs. As a financial manager and consultant, I have been involved in many profit improvement initiatives. Here are some examples – they are mostly from construction, retail and land development, but the concepts can be applied to any business.

COST REDUCTION

Reducing costs can be as simple as finding a new supplier, but sometimes a more detailed analysis or a global approach can be effective.

Looking at the details – A retailer’s payroll is typically its largest expense. At one company, the standing order was to maintain payroll at 10% of sales. This worked consistently, but when we started to look at customer traffic patterns, we saw that staffing was not being increased at peak times, or decreased during the slow hours of the morning or evening. A new staff planning system improved customer service and brought payroll under the 10% target.

Statistical analysis – A homebuilder had a problem with windows leaking during rainstorms. Nobody really knew why, but replacement was costly, and it was a serious customer satisfaction problem. We formed a Six Sigma task force to gather and analyze the data. We broke down the data by community, by subcontractor, by supervisor, by manufacturer and installer until a pattern became evident. After a few changes, leaking window problems were reduced by 60%.

Centralization – At another retailer, repairs and maintenance expenses were the responsibility of the local management, and no amount of threats or encouragement could stop costs from increasing. We centralized the function in the corporate office, and made low cost arrangements with regional contractors, reducing costs by over 30%.

Glaring opportunities – A land developer always paid for up-front infrastructure costs – roads, sewer, etc. – on its development projects. This had a huge impact on cash flow and ROI. I learned that most cities are willing to finance these costs with municipal bonds. It wasn’t a secret, but the company never took advantage of the opportunity. I set about becoming something of an expert on the subject, and initiated over $100 million of cost savings that went straight to the bottom line when the developed properties were sold.

Planning – At a homebuilder, we carefully reviewed the cost of every house, and construction (or even purchase of the land) would not be approved until we were certain that projected profits met our investment return guidelines. Marketing would sometimes change design specifications, but the purchasing managers were often the ones who would drop the cost per square foot by changing a material or redesigning a minor architectural detail. This was sometimes a painful process, but the result was a low cost, high value product.

Does your CFO encourage your management team to look at cost reduction in a comprehensive way?